McCaffery: Selection Sunday needs less mystery, more sizzle

It doesn’t get any more exciting than this: Coach John Calipari’s dog Palmer, bottom center, gives a once-over to University of Kentucky basketball players as they await the network cameras to turn on at the Calipari home in Lexington, Ky. on Selection Sunday.
JAMES CRISP — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

New York, the center of all entertainment, a warm evening in the spring. Along Broadway, tourists are hustling toward theaters. Around one corner, the David Letterman Show is letting out, and a small crowd has gathered to watch Bob Dylan scoot toward a waiting limo. Somewhere in town is a ballgame, a concert, a nightclub just about to throb.

And there, in Manhattan, is the event of the night, the one requiring the most security, the one attracting hundreds of camera-phone-wielding, panting thrill-seekers. Around a luxury hotel surrounded by satellite TV trucks, streets have been closed. Inside, a ballroom is packed, with the lucky just hoping to find a place to stand.

There is no better show in town, not on this night. For on this night, some guy will drag postcards out of envelopes.

It’s the NBA Draft Lottery, but it is more. It is a TV show, a production, a lure. And it is proof that the 21st-century sports fan has evolved. No longer is it necessary to provide a game to ensure an audience. Indeed, a game is a three-hour inconvenience. No, give the sports fan a night of finding out where the Clippers will pick. Better still, allow hundreds of thousands of fans to cram the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for hours, just in the hope that they can learn at once whether the Buffalo Bills will draft that big kid from Texas or the quarterback from Notre Dame.

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Why?

Who knows?

But it all became relevant again Sunday when another non-sports-event of over-inflated relevance captivated millions … and wasted an opportunity to sprinkle itself with even more cheap glitter. Selection Sunday. Why is it run out of a closed New York meeting room? Something wrong with a nearby college basketball venue of some history that some like to call Madison Square Garden?

Ridiculous as Selection Sunday is, and it is even more absurd than that NBA Lottery, people like it. So like anything else that people enjoy, why not make it more visible? Better still, why not make it what it should be … and then more visible?

The worst part of Selection Sunday is not the Sunday, but the selection. That’s because there is no reason a sport where every event is decided on a point system instantly throws most of that out and turns the process over to a panel of people in business suits. Imagine the NFL working that way. Instead of the wild card teams winning their way into the playoffs, they would be made to wait until a panel of experts decides if they are worthy.

At its core, nothing is fairer than sports. Score the most points, win. Win enough games, collect a trophy. For that, every college basketball player, coach, team or fan should have the most fundamental sports right. That would be to know exactly what has to be done before the clock starts winking. In college basketball, there should be a formula that would take all recent NCAA Tournament results and then award a certain number of available playoff bids to each conference. Every conference would have at least one bid, preserving the charm of the event. But by October, the ACC would know that nine of its teams will qualify for the NCAA Tournament, the Big East six, the MAAC one, the Atlantic 10 two, whatever. Each year it would fluctuate. The total would be 68. Before one jump-ball is contested, every one of the 351 programs should know exactly what needs to be achieved. If the preseason metrics reveal that the Big Ten deserves seven bids and a team finished eighth, well, that team should have won more games. Won. Games. That has a certain appeal. It’s not unlike the way the PIAA tournaments work. Each district has a fixed number of spots. And those are won. They are not selected.

All of that could be achieved without sacrificing the real lure of Selection Sunday, a little something called gambling. Just to give the good citizens of that selection committee something to do, preserve the thrill of the moment by allowing them to privately plot the qualifying teams on the bracket lines. Then share the results in a public arena, which would be filled with screaming fans and cheerleaders and pep bands and the goof in the multi-colored wig. Madison Square Garden. The Palestra. Something like that. Move the show around. Make it a destination for college basketball fans. Charge admission. Give the cash to Coaches vs. Cancer. If everyone were grown up about the whole thing, one ideal site would be in Vegas. Since fans of all 68 teams would know, not hope, that they are involved, they would fill that stadium being built for the Raiders, just to scream as a round-card girl arranges the matchups on the big board. From there, they would rupture hamstrings while sprinting to the nearest sports book, wallets in every pocket.

College basketball should be a competition, not a guessing game. And Selection Sunday should be a party, not a panel show.

If it can work for the lousiest teams in pro basketball, it can work even better for the best in the college game.